


Braver

by JazzRaft



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Study, Fluff and Angst, Freeform, Gen, Insomnia, Introspection, Late Night Conversations, Male Friendship, Queer Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27181333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: When Noctis worries, Noctis wants to help; and when Noctis wants to help, he wants to be close, be listening, be ready to lend whatever hand is needed of him. Cloud doesn't seem to want him to be any of that. But Noct is not about to stop trying.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum & Cloud Strife
Comments: 13
Kudos: 73





	Braver

**Author's Note:**

> (This doesn't necessarily conform to Dissidia canon, I just like to use that world as an excuse to play around in. I had Remake!Cloud in mind when writing this, but interpret as you may!)

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t say that you weren’t.”

Cloud blinked, slowly, staring down at the ground in an expression of vacant pensiveness. It took him a minute to process the response, like he hadn’t expected that to be what Noctis would say. Like his “ _I’m fine_ ” was a code scripted to initiate a shutdown, but Noct’s counter-sequence kept the program from closing and made the whole system seize up. Noctis wasn’t quite sure what to make of that, but then, he really didn’t know what to make of Cloud Strife, in general.

He especially didn’t know what to make of the paralytic terror he’d just seen on the guy’s face, staring wide-eyed at the temperate, gray horizon as if some colossal horror Noct couldn’t see was heading right for them. He tried talking to Cloud, and got no answer. He tried stepping into the terror-prone trajectory of his gaze, yet found no recognition. It was only after Noct finally summoned enough of his kingly courage to reach out and touch Cloud that he finally snapped out of it.

With a high, shuddering sound he would have never imagined the stalwart soldier capable of making, Cloud rapidly blinked back to himself, clutching his head until the thin sheet of ice he kept between himself and everyone else froze back into place.

Noct had no idea how he didn’t see the cracks before.

“Why don’t you get some sleep?” he offered, cautiously. “I can take this watch, I don’t mind.”

“Said I’m fine,” Cloud said, the increasing rigidity of his shoulders betraying the level calm of his voice.

“Again, never said otherwise.”

Cloud flinched, sinking against the stone wall as if he hoped it would crack open and devour him, just so he could escape the glitches of this conversation. Noctis empathized, he really, well and truly did. It was like looking into a mirror – if that mirror were taller than him, blonder than him, and fifty times higher than him on Noct’s personal scale for physical attractiveness – which absolutely did _not_ keep him awake at night in a queer panic for the first few days he was dropped into this world.

Point being, he understood the instinct to shy away from another person who intuited something he didn’t want to be pressed about. And while that empathy advised him to exercise some of the mercy he’d never been granted when he was in this situation, nevertheless, Noct couldn’t seem to tear himself away.

Because he was worried. And when he was worried, he wanted to be helpful. And when he wanted to be helpful… well, maybe he came off as a little pushy. _A little_. So, sue him for giving a shit, because he could make this man a gillionaire from all the ones he gave.

“Don’t sleep,” Cloud insisted. “It’s a SOLDIER thing.”

Noctis deliberately turned his head in the direction of their third companion. Lightning perched against the cave wall with an arm around her sword like she could snap awake at the drop of a chocobo feather. Noct used to joke that he could fight MTs in his sleep, just to earn a little praise from Gladio. But with Lightning? There was no joking about it. At least she was _actually sleeping_ … at least, it _looked_ like she was. (Noct had been on the receiving end of the woman’s sword for catching her unawares enough times to doubt it.)

Cloud cringed again. “Different kind of soldier,” he mumbled, weakly. His arms crossed a bit tighter across his chest. “Why aren’t you asleep, anyway?”

Noctis brushed a hand against the back of his neck, where the sweat of his nightmares matted his hair. Insomnia was an old enemy he never felt confident in defeating, but at least he had a lot of practice facing it down. It even brought him a little comfort – twisted though it may be – considering his completely out of the ordinary circumstances.

Nightmares were not new to him, though he wished that this time, they could have been about this place, about these strangers, or about the anxiety he felt being unmoored from the anchorage of his friends. But instead, with his familiar sleeplessness had come more familiar dreams, made more terrible by the fact they were memories.

Cloud was staring at him, searching for vindication. This was a turnabout defense Noctis was also closely acquainted with. It really wasn’t fair of him to use it against him.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

Cloud bristled and turned away, the delicate curvature of his jaw suddenly going stiff. It was Noct’s turn to cringe, at himself, knowing before the words were even out of his mouth that it was the wrong thing to say. If Cloud was anything at all like him, then being too direct was the quickest way to scare him back into himself.

“Forget it,” Cloud grumbled.

“Sorry,” Noct sighed.

He put an extra foot between them, but didn’t know where else to go. He couldn’t go back to sleep. Not with the ghosts pining for him back in Eos haunting his dreams. He’d been careful about sneaking out of camp – a part of the insomniac routine he’d gotten a little too good at. He’d been surrounded by light sleepers for all of his life. He either learned to step lightly, or he could never get the privacy he needed to just sit and have a breakdown for a bit.

Not that he was in as bad a place to warrant one tonight. Or that he could get said privacy. Because while he might have snuck past one sleeping soldier, he never counted himself lucky enough to sneak past another.

Though, in the state Noctis caught him in, he could have waltzed right on by and Cloud would have never seen him.

Cloud was a strange phenomenon. Sometimes, Noctis forgot he was there if he didn’t say anything for an extended period of time, and every time he startled when Cloud was eventually prompted to speak, Noct always felt guilty over it. Lightning never seemed to forget he was there – but then, Lightning was a territorial creature who kept everything and everyone within a hundred foot radius of herself in a meticulously mapped mental catalog. (He also wasn’t a thousand percent sure he’d ever seen her blink, so...)

Cloud was a pale shade hanging over camp, always present, always tangible when Noct was looking straight at him, yet when he looked away, Cloud faded at the corners of his eyes. A piece of the horizon; always within sight, never quite within reach. There were times where it felt like he was never really there, just a faint wisp at the edges of a broader sky. It was only now, catching him in that strange state of distant dread, that Noct wondered just how far away he really was.

“Stop that,” Cloud said, numbly.

“What?”

“Staring.”

“Right. Sorry. Again,” Noct said, scrambling for some semblance of diplomacy to help him out here. All those years of coaching with Ignis at twelve in the morning before a big conference suddenly went right out of his head. “You just seemed… kind of out of it?”

“’M fine.”

“Yeah. Sure. So you say.”

That earned him a glare, but there was no power behind it. It almost worried Noctis _more_ that Cloud couldn’t seem to muster up the strength to be angry at him. There was a world-worn weariness to his blue-green eyes, and Noct couldn’t tell which world it was. Maybe it was all of them, massive shadows of burden that eclipsed everything else. Because in that moment, shrinking into the wall with his eyes downcast, tight tremors radiating across the tighter clasp of his arms, Cloud looked so very, _very_ small.

And _that_ was really like looking into mirror.

Noct would have never drawn comparisons before. Everyone in this world seemed so much stronger than him, so much wiser than him, so much more self-assured in their convictions than him. Cloud had been one of many fixtures for Noct’s admiration. The density of his muscles compounded by that devastating dive from shoulder to waistline had been a frame of envy that frequently left Noct feeling helpless in more ways than one. And his stolid composure in the face of all this world-bending madness had helped Noct feel a little more at ease – if everyone else could pretend this was normal, he supposed he could try, too.

Cloud was so much more cool-headed than him, so much more powerful than him – he’d watched him fight, the way he hauled that giant sword through the bones of his enemies with such unflinching determination made Noct’s attempts to warp-dodge every hit coming for him feel like an act of cowardice rather than one of tactic. Cloud was everything Noct wanted to be, had been trying to be for a long time, and never quite succeeded at becoming. He was never that cool under pressure, nor that controlled in a fight, and never that solid in his courage to face what was coming head-on.

It was only now that he realized, while Cloud may have been all of those things, none of it came without a price. He looked invincible out there, like some war-born deity made of flesh and gold. But it was in moments like these where, if Noct actually watched him and didn’t let him fade into the background, where he remembered that he was only human. And it was in that shiver of vulnerability, trying to retreat into the darkness which hid his flaws so well, that Noct really saw himself.

Noctis drifted along the lip of the cave until he found a comfortable spot to sit down. The stone beneath his thighs was cold and vaguely damp. It was a far cry from the cozy sanctuary of the tents Gladio swore by, but the chill was a welcome relief for the hot thump of his blood trying to race away from his nightmares. Cloud glanced at him, wariness turning to what Noct dared to think might be worry.

“Kinda wasn’t asking when I said I’d take this watch,” Noct explained. “Was kinda hoping for the excuse.”

He didn’t need to say what for. The shift in Cloud’s expression was like watching fog pass over sunlight. Understanding dawned in the back of his gaze, and perhaps there was a little bit of a confession in the whispery sigh he conceded to it. Noct was surprised when he sat down next to him. Cloud approached him with all the halting fretfulness of a stray chocobo, ready to flee at the first hint of encouragement.

Noct schooled himself into the picture of neutrality – he’d gotten pretty good at that, between Council meetings and press conferences and customer service. Cloud adjusted the sword on his back so it didn’t scrape the stone, the breadth of the blade extending past Noct’s shoulders.

“Looks heavy,” Noct said, mildly.

“Sometimes.”

“Y’know, I could always carry it for you,” Noct offered, waving a few crystalline shards of the armiger around his fingers. “I’m pretty much the royal pack-mule back in my world.”

“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?” Cloud asked, a lilt of amusement in his voice.

“You would think,” Noct chuckled. “But no, my subjects have their ways of keeping me humble.”

Cloud exhaled a puff of air that could have been a laugh, if he dared to smile. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder to the hilt of his sword, avoiding Noct’s eye. “Thanks but… we stick together,” Cloud muttered. That strange, far-removed look on his face returned for just a moment, just for a scant wrinkle of his brow.

“No problem,” Noct said. He didn’t press him on it this time, distracting himself from asking by pulling his bad knee up to his chest – it didn’t like the cold floor. “My Uncle Cor’s that way about his sword, too. You’re a lot alike, now that I think about it. Doesn’t talk much, either.”

“Hm.”

“Yup, that sounds about right.”

Another little huff that could have been a laugh escaped Cloud, though his face never did anything to prove that it was. Noctis chose to believe it. Took some of the weight off his conscience for making him so uncomfortable before. They lapsed into silence, and Noctis forced himself not to interrupt it, even though there were a thousand and one things he wanted to ask. _Diplomacy, Noct_ , Ignis’s voice in his head advised, gently. _It’s a give and take_. Right now, he had to give Cloud some quiet, and when he was ready, a few moments later, Noct could take the forgiveness.

“Sorry you can’t sleep,” Cloud mumbled.

“You too.”

“It’s…”

Cloud paused, catching himself in that “fine” line of automatic coding. Noct watched his fair skin pull taut with the effort to find something else to say.

“It’s… a lot,” Cloud said instead, nodding out to the chaotic world beyond. “All of this.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Noctis laughed. He draped an elbow over his knee, hand nervously tapping against it. “But you all seem to be going along with it alright. Me? I’m just… I have no idea what I’m doing. I need to get back home, because my friends are there, and I want to help them… but I want to help here too, because you’re all…”

He cut himself off. He thought of these people as his friends – or, at least, he wanted to – but maybe that wasn’t true. He wasn’t sure if the way he felt about everyone here wasn’t entirely one-sided. Maybe they were all just a means to an end to each other. Just passing acquaintances, tools for the gods – story of his life – nothing more than that. Maybe he shouldn’t try so hard. Maybe he really did care too much for his own good.

Cloud had been quiet for a while, and Noct was about ready to take that as confirmation for all of his doubts. But as he would come to learn the longer he wandered this world, the key to Cloud was merely to have patience. If you waited long enough, didn’t rush him into it, were just present enough for him to materialize, you might just get to see a sunrise.

“Sucks that you were dragged into this,” Cloud told him, slowly. “But everyone’s glad that you’re here.”

“Don’t know about everyone…”

“Everyone.”

Cloud had avoided looking Noct in the eye until now, and even as he did, it was a fleeting thing. Noct had thought Cloud’s aversion to eye contact had purely been out of disinterest. But just before his gaze skittered away, Noctis understood. It was just there for a second, a pool of warmth beneath the icy planes of blue and green, but he saw it, and he recognized it.

Cloud was just shy, just scared of showing himself lest he be found lacking. The soldier was merely an artifice of safety, not who he really was.

Noct knew masks better than anyone. While he feared the mantle of the Crown Prince, sometimes he still wore it of his own volition. Even if he was afraid of it, he could still give himself the illusion of strength from behind it. There was a fear in Cloud that Noct would never understand, but now at least, he knew there was a mask, and he knew that there was a Cloud behind it that just needed some time to feel brave enough to put it aside. And while Noct didn’t always feel all that brave for himself, when it came to unseen terrors crawling through the night, he could be braver for a friend.

“Well, there’s a vote of confidence,” Noct said, breezily. “Try my best, but it’s hard to keep up with the way you wield that thing.” He pointed at Cloud’s sword. “How do you even lift it?”

“They make you strong enough for it in SOLDIER.”

“So by cheating.”

The look on Cloud’s face was genuinely affronted, a faint flush of pink coloring his fair features. The implacable evenness of his voice suddenly rose up in his defense. “There’s skill involved too!”

Noct bit his lip to keep from laughing. “Okay, okay, if you say so. Still sounds like cheating.”

“And you having magic DNA isn’t?”

“No way!” Noct squeaked. “You can be king and still suck at this! I had to train, I have callouses to prove it, I swear…”

Noctis rambled on to keep himself from pointing out that there was a smile on Cloud’s face. Drawing attention to it was just going to frighten it away. It was the barest slip of a thing, a sliver of pink twilight beneath a dense gray mist. In the morning, Noct might have just thought he dreamt it.

* * *

He wasn’t awake in the morning. Neither of them were. Lightning loomed over them with her arms crossed, grappling with the moral quandary of waking them up when they looked so uncharacteristically at peace.

Cloud leaned against the wall, arms crossed, head down, the stressed lines of his face smooth in the serenity of sleep. Noct reclined against him, back leaning against his arm, legs stretched along the edge of the cave with his head lolled to the side like he could tumble right down the hill if either of them so much as snored.

Lightning sighed, pinching her own sleeplessness from between her eyes. She didn’t dare sleep in this world, not with these stranger gods watching her every move, and not when there was so much keeping her allies awake at night.

Her boys needed rest. There were a lot of these nights ahead of them. She couldn’t fight their nightmares, but she supposed, if some shambling something-or-other came to pick a fight this morning, she could do that much. She was in no rush to run at the beck and call of the gods. It wasn’t them whom she owed her loyalty.

That’s what friends were for.

**Author's Note:**

> This was an extremely self-indulgent, long-winded experimentation where I wanted to get to know Cloud, but didn't feel confident just yet in writing from his perspective. So, here we have Noct, vicariously exploring the enigma of Cloud in my stead. Idk if I liked how this turned out, but it's a starting point! Let me know how I did in my first tiny foray into VII stuff!


End file.
